Dakno Blogs – Updates, 3.6, Updated Theme

We have updated all blogs to the latest version of WordPress (3.6), and updated all plugins.

This update also brings an update to the theme that most users have activated. We started from scratch to take advantage of some of the new features WordPress has introduced over the years and focused on giving you more control over how your blog looks.

Blog Theme

You can still select how your blog looks, however we’ve made some improvements:

The “standard” theme shows the full post.

The “photo blog” style, is now a cascading grid format (like Pinterest). We recommend this theme if you only post pictures.

The “excerpts (no thumb)” option, shows just the excerpts and no thumbnail.

The “excerpts (with thumbs)” options, shows a thumbnail, if a photo is available in the post.

The last option “excerpts (Pinterest style)”, is similar to the photo blog style, except both a photo and excerpt are shown if they are available.

The blog types with thumbnails should also behave better, are larger, and will automatically try to pull thumbnails from youtube and vimeo videos, if available.

You also have the option of turning off just the year on the published date. “Photo Blog” and “Excerpts (Pinterest Style)” do not show the date on the index page.

On the bottom of each single post the author’s name will appear, with their gravatar (if you don’t have a gravatar attached to your email, we recommend you get one set up!). It will also display the description set on the user’s wordpress profile page, if set. You can turn this off.

You may also choose to turn off the sidebar on the index page, or all pages.

All these new and updated settings are available under Appearance > Customize.

Additionally, featured images are now used on certain format types. They will appear above your post.

Swift Blog Plugin

Previously, the base theme automatically integrated social media sharing scripts for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+. These have been moved to this plugin. Your previous settings will carry over, and you can maintain them by going to Settings > Hybrid Social Buttons. The social media sharing buttons will only show on single pages. If you’d like to show your social media icons on the front page of your blog, you may opt to use one of the options in the plugins section (like Digg Digg, ShareThis, JetPack, or Shareaholic).